Bitsy smirked. “Don’t get cocky. It’s only because Paul Glick is such a chucklehead.”
Chucklehead? Luke couldn’t begin to guess what that meant.
Lily frowned. “I can’t believe I nearly married him.”
Dan took a shuddering breath. “Don’t even mention it, Lily. I still have nightmares.” He leaned over and gave Lily a kiss on the forehead. “I am the happiest man on earth.”
“No kissing,” Bitsy said as she scooped a helping of cheesy potatoes onto her plate.
Dan merely grinned. He could get away with just about anything with Bitsy. He’d saved her niece from making a terrible mistake.
Dan passed the potatoes to Luke, who took more than he wanted to eat—not because they didn’t look delicious, but because his insides were tied up in knots about Poppy and he could barely bring himself to eat anything.
“Why all this talk about Paul Glick, anyway?” Dan said. “It will give me indigestion.”
The look Lily gave Poppy didn’t escape Luke. Was Poppy worried about Paul’s threat to have them shunned? Maybe her unhappiness had nothing to do with Luke. He didn’t like the thought of Paul upsetting Poppy, but he’d feel a whole lot better if he knew Poppy’s distress hadn’t been his fault.
Luke passed Poppy the potatoes but held on to the serving spoon until she made eye contact with him. “Poppy, did something happen with Paul?”
She pressed her lips together and took the spoon from his hand. “We can take care of ourselves.”
That short answer said more than a whole day’s worth of talking. The thought of Paul Glick was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Did Luke need to pay a friendly visit to Glick’s Market? Nobody would be allowed to upset his Poppy while he had something to say about it.
Luke clenched his teeth. Poppy didn’t need him to defend her against anybody, least of all Paul Glick. Judging by the look on her face, she didn’t even want him to. Poppy fought her own battles, no matter how much Luke would have liked to fight them for her.
A familiar longing grew in his chest until it threatened to suffocate him. Poppy didn’t need him, but he would be worthless without her.
He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even eat. He just sat there mutely staring at his pork chops and cheesy potatoes. He had never felt like more of an outsider. Poppy wouldn’t let him in.
A line appeared between Dan’s brows. “What happened with Paul Glick? Did something happen?”
Lily poured Dan a glass of milk. “Poppy’s muffins are delicious with raspberry jam. You should try one.”
The line between Dan’s eyebrows got longer. “Lily, did something happen today when you went to town?”
Rose, the quiet one, seemed eager to talk where her sisters weren’t. “Paul Glick said he is going to talk to the elders about having Poppy shunned.”
“Poppy?” Luke said. “Why Poppy?”
As soon as it came out of his mouth, he realized what a dumb question it was. Poppy had broken her vow of nonviolence when she socked Griff Simons—at least Paul Glick thought so.
“Paul Glick is blowing hot air, like he always does,” Dan said, flashing Poppy a half smile. Luke knew Dan well enough to recognize the anger behind the casual expression. Dan would probably volunteer to do all the dishes. He cleaned like an Amish fraa when he got angry. “They won’t shun Poppy for protecting Rose and Luke’s sisters. They didn’t even put Jethro Schwartz under the ban when he bought a car.”
“Only because he sold it,” Poppy said as if she’d rather not talk about it.
“We should tell them that Luke took a punch from Griff’s father,” Dan said.
A shadow traveled across Poppy’s already sad face as she pushed a kernel of corn around her plate with her fork. “Jah. Luke fixed it.”
What had he done? She acted as if he’d thrown a kitten into the ditch.
Rose gazed pointedly at Luke. “Dinah Eicher accused Poppy of trying to be like the boys. She said Poppy needs a husband to be respectable.”
Poppy smiled a painful, flippant smile. “Apparently, I’m nobody without a husband.”
Time stood still as every person at the table, including Poppy, turned to Luke and stared at him as if they expected him to say something. Was it a subtle hint for Luke to ask Poppy to marry him? His heart beat double time as hope flooded through his veins. They didn’t even have to make the suggestion. He’d jump at the chance to marry Poppy.
Wait. What about Dinah Eicher?
His heart plummeted to the floor. Dinah Eicher had told Poppy what? Luke had heard the word husband and disregarded everything else—he was stupid like that sometimes. Dinah Eicher told Poppy she needed a husband to be respectable? Poppy didn’t need anyone to make her respectable. She was brave and strong and wunderbarr all on her own. Dinah Eicher knew nothing.
One look at Poppy’s stricken face and it became obvious that Dinah’s words had stung worse than a whole nest of angry wasps. But how? How could Poppy ever believe such things about herself?
Maybe because at one time, he had told her the very same things.
The pain of guilt was so raw, he couldn’t draw a breath.
Poppy folded her arms, which wasn’t easy with a bulky cast. “I don’t care what Dinah Eicher says,” she lied.
They were all still staring at Luke as if they weren’t quite sure they liked him. “Luke,” Rose said. “What has Dinah told you? Does she think Poppy should be shunned?”
“How should I know what Dinah thinks?”
Poor Rose widened her eyes and pursed her lips together as if she would never speak again. Oh, sis yuscht, he had never spoken to Rose that way before. There was no excuse for it, except that he was feeling as low as a cockroach in a cellar.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said. “I guess I just don’t understand.”
Lily nodded her head and held his gaze as if willing him to say the right thing. “Dinah said some very cruel things about Poppy. You don’t agree with her, do you?”
Realization hit him upside the head, and he couldn’t even see straight. They thought he and Dinah were still seeing each other. But how could they? Hadn’t he spent every spare minute on the Honeybee Farm?
He slapped his palm against his forehead. “Didn’t you tell them, Dan?”
Dan frowned. “Tell them what?”
Bitsy stood up so fast her chair toppled over behind her. “Do you smell that?”
Luke sniffed the air and caught the unmistakable smell of smoke. He sprang to his feet, being careful not to step on Billy Idol. Soon everybody was on their feet. They’d all smelled the smoke.
It seemed like a race to the door. Dan opened it while Bitsy grabbed her shotgun. Luke was the first out on the porch. A plume of smoke rose above the honey house. With his heart already halfway down the lane, Luke leapt from the porch and ran for the honey house. Dan and the Honeybee Schwesters were close behind. “Dan, get the hose,” Luke yelled.
“There are buckets in the barn,” Poppy called, already headed there with her sisters.
Luke nearly yelled for her to stay in the house. She had one good arm, an injured face, and a freshly healed shoulder. She shouldn’t be fighting a fire. He thought better of calling her back and growled in frustration. He’d put the fire out himself before Poppy lifted a bucket.
A hose and attachment abutted the barn near the chicken coop, but there was also one behind the honey house near the windmill. Luke raced to the back to turn on the hose.
Black smoke billowed from a smoldering pile of boxes and garbage that had been pushed up against the honey house. Flames were already lapping against the back window. The honey house was constructed completely of wood. It was only a matter of seconds before the wall would catch fire.
Rose and Lily ran toward him with buckets, and he turned the water on full blast to fill them. Dan raced around the side of the building with a bucket and a rake. He handed his bucket to Lily and took a rake to the fire, doing his best to pull the debris away from the building w
ithout setting the surrounding weeds or himself on fire.
Luke’s heart did a flip. “Where’s Poppy?”
Lily looked toward the barn. “She was right behind me. I don’t know.”
Luke dropped the hose and bolted for the barn. He couldn’t hope that she had decided it would be dangerous to try to put out the fire with a cast on her arm. She would never run for safety, especially if her sisters needed her.
Ach! He loved that about her.
Ach! He hated that about her.
Luke didn’t see Poppy anywhere between the barn and the back of the honey house. He opened the barn door and called her name. No answer.
He worked himself into a panic without much effort. Where could she have gone in a matter of seconds? Hearing a faint meow and a loud hiss, he looked down the lane to see Billy Idol standing sentinel in front of the honey house door. He liked that cat more and more all the time.
Of course Poppy would be doing something deerich, foolish. He kicked up the gravel under his feet, sprinted to the front of the honey house, and went inside. He almost passed out with relief. There was Poppy trying to drag a large metal tub across the floor with one hand. Wisps of smoke seeped through the cracks in the wood on the backside of the building. Once the wood caught fire, it wouldn’t take long for the whole building to go up yet.
“Poppy,” he yelled, not even attempting to be nice. “Get out of here now.”
“We can’t support ourselves without this honey,” she screamed. “I’ve got to save the extractor.”
He grabbed her by the arm. “It’s not worth your life.”
She pushed him away with all the force of her broken hand. “Don’t tell me what to do. Just leave me alone, Luke Bontrager.”
He considered throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out, but she’d put up a fight and probably hate him for saving her life. She wanted the extractor. If he took the extractor out, she’d come with it, wouldn’t she?
Sometimes, only sometimes, he kept his head well enough to be smart.
“Come on then,” he said, grabbing one of the handles of the extractor.
Poppy met his eye and grabbed the other handle. It wasn’t light, not even for Luke. Together they carried it out of the honey house and set it down before a fit of coughing overtook both of them.
“We’ve got to get the tools and the empty supers,” she said.
“No more, Poppy.”
“We can’t support ourselves without the honey.”
Bitsy came stumbling down the lane dragging two of the biggest fire extinguishers Luke had ever seen. They must have been heavy. She wasn’t making much progress.
Luke rushed to her side and took both of them from her hands. “Get them to the fire,” Bitsy said, completely out of breath. “Hurry.”
Luke glanced at Poppy. “Do not go back in there.”
She looked as if she were just waiting for him to go away. He growled but couldn’t spare the time to make her promise to stay out of trouble. All he could do was pray she’d decide she’d rather not die in a fire.
Bitsy followed him as Luke lugged both extinguishers around to the back. Lily and Rose were filling buckets and throwing them on the fire, but their efforts were futile. The flames were over six feet high, blistering hot, and getting hotter. Luke handed one of the fire extinguishers to Dan. He showed him how to pull the pin and squeeze the trigger. “Aim for the base of the fire,” he yelled.
Dan nodded. The fire extinguishers popped and hissed as Luke and Dan swept the stream of white, powdery liquid across the base of the honey house.
The fire was no match for two heavy-duty fire extinguishers. It sputtered and seemed to disappear almost instantly. Luke sprayed every possible hot spot even when the fire seemed to be completely out. Dan picked up his rake and spread the garbage out so Luke could spray all of it for gute measure.
They studied the damage and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Nobody needed to ask how the fire had started or who started it. The troublemaker had been momentarily forgotten in their happiness of putting it out. Dan threw down his rake and hugged Lily. Bitsy surprised Luke by smiling and slapping him on the back in a rare show of approval. “It is a gute thing you are so strong, Luke Bontrager. I would still be dragging those fire extinguishers down the lane.”
“I’m glad I could help. I’m glad you had those fire extinguishers.”
She shrugged. “The handicapped workers were having a sale.”
One corner of the honey house was singed, but there didn’t look to be any major damage. Luke would make sure the walls were sturdy before he let anyone back inside.
Inside.
Luke gazed around for Poppy and frowned when she didn’t appear from around the front of the honey house. His heart sank. For sure and certain, she’d gone back in to save the hive tools. Ach! He would give her the biggest scolding of her life.
The door was halfway open, and he shoved it so hard it slammed against the wall behind it. He didn’t mean to be quite so forceful, but his muscles were taut and his nerves were frayed and he didn’t temper his own strength. Poppy sat on the floor of the honey house surrounded by a half dozen upended supers. No doubt she’d been trying to carry a whole stack out with one hand and dropped all of them. Blood dripped from a wound in her shin that didn’t look too serious, and she tried to scoot her way backward out of the room on her bottom. She didn’t make much progress with her injured leg and her one good hand.
Billy Idol, bless his heart, kept vigil over Poppy as if he were guarding her from harm. He wouldn’t have been able to drag Poppy from a burning building like a dog might have, but he was a comfort to Luke all the same.
That stupid, adorable cat.
Luke’s first impulse was to yell at Poppy for being so stubborn, but he remembered it was one of her best qualities and bit his tongue. She only made him so mad because he loved her so much. He squatted next to her and laid a gentle hand on her shin just above the bleeding cut.
“You should go help with the fire,” she said. Tears pooled in her eyes. She blinked, and they slid down her cheeks.
He pretended not to notice. “The fire’s out,” he said, swiping supers aside like blocks. Without asking permission, he slid one hand under her knees and another around her back and lifted her into his arms. Her sigh sounded like a surrender as she snaked both arms, cast and all, around his neck and relaxed into his embrace.
His heart swelled bigger than the sky. He never wanted Poppy to leave the safety of his arms.
She buried her face in the crook of his neck, and he could feel her warm tears against his skin as he carried her out of the smoky honey house with Billy Idol following close behind. “Don’t cry, Poppy.” He curled his lips upward. “I’m not so bad. Most girls would love it if I carried them out of a burning building.”
She stiffened and pushed herself away from him. “Most girls? Put me down.”
Stunned, he let her slip from his arms and onto her feet without even asking if she could stand on that leg. As it turned out, she could stand just fine. She swiped the tears from her eyes, threw back her head, and growled in frustration. He’d said something stupid, though he couldn’t for the life of him guess what it was. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said, because he could think of nothing else.
“Most girls might throw themselves at you, Luke Bontrager, but I never would.”
He furrowed his brow. “I never said you would.”
“I didn’t throw myself at you. You’re the one who picked me up and carried me out of there even though I didn’t need your help.”
Luke curled his fingers around the back of his neck. “Nae. You never need my help.”
“Dinah Eicher says I throw myself at you because I want a husband.” She glared at him with all the force of a bolt of lightning. “Let me tell you something. No matter what you and Dinah think, I don’t need a husband. I don’t want a husband, and I certainly don’t want you,” she said, as if the very thought stabbe
d her in the heart. “Just go marry Dinah Eicher and leave me alone.”
Her tortured expression stole his breath. As usual, he had messed up somewhere down the line, and he wasn’t sure how to fix it. She turned away from him and limped up the lane. “Poppy, wait,” he said, catching up with her in three giant steps.
She kept walking. He felt as if he’d been forever chasing her. “I challenge you to a race,” he said.
That made her pull up short. She squinted with her entire face. “What?”
“I’ll race you to the bridge, and if I win, you will stop glaring at me and listen to what I have to say.”
“I don’t want to race.”
He tried to give her a teasing smile even though it was a pretty gute bet that he was just as miserable as she was. “Can I just claim victory?” She started to walk away. “It would make it so much easier if I didn’t have to chase you into the bathroom. You know how persistent I am.”
Poppy stopped walking, huffed out a shaking breath, and folded her arms. He could see the tears collecting in her eyes, threatening to spill out at one cruel word from him. She didn’t understand that he never wanted to make her cry again.
He reached out to take her shoulders and thought better of it. Poppy was in no mood. “First of all, you have never thrown yourself at me, and I have never told Dinah that you have.”
“Then why did she say ... ?”
He held up a finger to stop her from talking. “I won the race, remember? You promised to listen.”
She looked away. “You didn’t win anything.”
“I can’t help it if you decided to forfeit.” He couldn’t resist. She looked so sad, so weary, as if she were holding the entire farm on her shoulders. He placed a hand on her arm. “I am the one who throws myself at you. I’ve been doing everything I can to show you how I feel, but you won’t take the hint. You are very thick, Poppy Christner.”
Her eyes glinted with surprise, and she looked completely and utterly offended. He obviously wasn’t getting through.